Outcome Difficulties in Drug Education

Abstract

Drug education differs considerably from crisis intervention and treatment. Workers in the latter fields find themselves involved in bringing people down from bad trips, in tending to those who have overdosed, and in helping addicts be rid of their habits through, for example, methadone maintenance or behavior therapy (e.g., Harris, 1973; Wisocki, 1973). Drug education, on the other hand, focuses on drug abuse prevention. Its programs are broader in scope, dealing for the most part with as yet non-drug-involved populations. The drug educator of the 1960's had a lot in common with Christopher Columbus. Both were seeking a newer world, but then again, both started out not knowing where they were going; both ended up not knowing where they had been, and both did it all on government money. In the early 1970's, however, there seemed to be general consensus that the threefold purpose of drug education was to (1) increase knowledge about drugs, (2) promote healthy attitudes toward the use of drugs, and (3) decrease (potential) drug abuse behavior in the general population (Horan, Shute, Swisher, & Westcott, 1973; Warner, Swisher, & Horan, 1973). But even this academic entente is fraught with conceptual and empirical problems.